![[polar-bear+3.jpeg]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/polar-bear2b3.jpeg?w=300&resize=205%2C199)
Published in the Journal of Animal Ecology
Climate change is making our environment ‘bluer’
The “colour” of our environment is becoming “bluer”, a change that could have important implications for animals’ risk of becoming extinct, ecologists have found. In a major study involving thousands of data points and published this week in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology, researchers examined how quickly or slowly animal populations and their environment change over time, something ecologists describe using “spectral colour”.
Ecologists have investigated the link between fluctuations in the environment and those of animal populations for the past 30 years. They describe fluctuations as a colour spectrum, where red signifies an environment or population that fluctuates more slowly over time (such as ocean temperature) and blue signifies more rapid fluctuations (such as changes in air temperature).
Existing models and theories suggest that the spectral colour of the environment should affect the spectral colour of animal populations. Now for the first time ecologists have assembled field data to confirm the theory.
Bernardo Garcia-Carreras and Dr Daniel Reuman of Imperial College London examined three large sets of data. They used the Global Population Dynamics Database, from which they extracted data on changes in population for 147 species of bird, mammal, insect, fish and crustacean over the past 30 years, and two sets of temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit and the Global Historical Climatology Network. The latter includes data collected from weather stations worldwide throughout the twentieth century.
The study not only confirmed that the colour of changes in the environment map onto the colour of changes in animal populations, but found that our environment is becoming “bluer”, in other words fluctuating more rapidly over time.
According to Dr Reuman: “We showed using field data for the first time that the colour of changes in the environment maps onto the colour of changes in populations: redder environments mean redder populations, and bluer environments mean bluer populations. We also found that the colour of the environment is changing – becoming bluer – apparently due to climate change.”
“The colour change refers to the change in ‘spectral colour’ but this does not mean that red means warmer temperatures. Spectral colour tells us how quickly or slowly temperature is oscillating over time. If the oscillations are comparatively slow, then we say that temperature has a ‘red’ spectrum, and if the changes are quick, then temperature is said to be ‘blue’. When we talk of temperature becoming ‘bluer’, we mean the oscillations in temperature are becoming faster over time,” explains Garcia-Carreras.
The results are important because previous studies show that the spectral colour of a population affects its extinction risk. Some simple models tell us that bluer populations – those that fluctuate more rapidly over time – are at less risk of extinction. This is because adverse conditions are more likely to be followed by better conditions when the environment is fluctuating more rapidly.
According to Dr Reuman: “Since it was previously known that the colour of changes in populations is related to extinction risk of the populations, our results show a way that climate change should impact the extinction risk of populations by affecting the colour of populations.”
While the study seems to provide some good news for species facing extinction, the researchers warn that this is offset by other pressures. “This apparent good news is tempered by the fact that habitat loss, overexploitation and other factors are likely more important drivers of extinction risk than the colour of temperature fluctuations,” Dr Reuman says.
Bernardo Garcia-Carreras and Daniel C. Reuman (2011), ‘An empirical link between the spectral colour of climate and the spectral colour of field populations in the context of climate change‘, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01833.x, is published in Journal of Animal Ecology on 6 April 2011.
Summary
1. The spectral colour of population dynamics and its causes have attracted much interest. The spectral colour of a time series can be determined from its power spectrum, which shows what proportion of the total variance in the time series occurs at each frequency. A time series with a red spectrum (a negative spectral exponent) is dominated by low-frequency oscillations, and a time series with a blue spectrum (a positive spectral exponent) is dominated by high-frequency oscillations.
2. Both climate variables and population time series are characterised by red spectra, suggesting that a population’s environment might be partly responsible for its spectral colour. Laboratory experiments and models have been used to investigate this potential link. However, no study using field data has directly tested whether populations in redder environments are redder.
3. This study uses the Global Population Dynamics Database together with climate data to test for this effect. We found that the spectral exponent of mean summer temperatures correlates positively and significantly with population spectral exponent.
4. We also found that over the last century, temperature climate variables on most continents have become bluer.
5. Although population time series are not long or abundant enough to judge directly whether their spectral colours are changing, our two results taken together suggest that population spectral colour may be affected by the changing spectral colour of climate variables. Population spectral colour has been linked to extinction; we discuss the potential implications of our results for extinction probability.
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Are you sure it was the 6th of April? I would have though the 1st far more appropriate!
Research funded by the BBC,
they got hundreds of millions to spend, and 25,000 salaried employees to spend it!
Bernardo Garcia-Carreras and Dr Daniel Reuman of Imperial College London examined three large sets of data. They used the Global Population Dynamics Database, from which they extracted data on changes in population for 147 species of bird, mammal, insect, fish and crustacean over the past 30 years, and two sets of temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit and the Global Historical Climatology Network. The latter includes data collected from weather stations worldwide throughout the twentieth century.
Perhaps they shouldn’t have relied on data from CRU?
/Mango
I don’t deny climate change, I know climate changes
So, change is good, except when it’s bad?
Or, change is bad, except when it’s good?
This is too confusing!
Isn’t this saying that “climate change” -> “bluer spectra” -> “less extinction”?
Although the concept of correlating spectral exponents on such things as “global temperature” vs “animal populations” sounds like an awfully tangled idea.
Well, whoopee doo! “Habitat loss, overexploitation and other factors are likely more important drivers of extinction risk than the colour of temperature fluctuations!”
How dare the British Ecological Society imperil our grandchildren’s future by sponsoring a study that shows that rapid climate changes could be actually beneficial to biological diversity? And worse, how dare they compound that heresy by suggesting that there are other, really detrimental anthropogenic environmental changes that should concern us?
Mobilise the EU to cut their funding immediately!
(if necessary, /sarc off)
Your tax dollars at work
What a bunch of hooey these folks are shoveling. The Earth is blue: the “blue marble,” as seen from space. But to the eco contingent, that’s apparently a very bad thing; as we all know, the only good and holy color is Green.
Hooey! I just found a spot of green on my block of Parmesan cheese. But it was a sort of blue-green, so I guess it wasn’t all bad. I’ll have to model it to be sure.
I’m not certain, but I think they may have just proved that Climate Change causes changes in climate. The mind boggles.
They clearly don’t understand that the rate of climate change and the rate of change in animal populations are ultimately driven by deterministic chaos.
If the did understand this point, they would realise that the observed correlation from this and previous studies has no validity and I suspect it will be found after a few years of time that the relationship is reversed.
Feng Shui anyone?
This reminds me very much of the reports the Ministry of Silly Walks used to release.
Maybe this mob finally caught up with Chuck Darwin, if the environment changes, species populations change, if it doesn’t, they don’t.
You know it makes sense.
p.s. I am perversely feeling sorry for our pommy cousins watching the billions upon billions of their hard earned being flushed down the dunny and there is nothing they can do about it. You lot need to take to the streets.
It amazes me that they can come to such specific conclusions by studying a period of only 30 years in the evolvement of animal species. What, in any case, does this costly research achieve for mankind other than an awful waste of money for some unsuspecting funding organisation.
I can see it now: The representatives of each species lining up two-by-two to “get their colours done” by an expert so that they can tell the rest of the species whether or not they are at risk. Or, maybe, they will do it online http://www.colourmebeautiful.co.uk/
I wonder if comedians are feeling threatened by this stuff yet? Are they are at risk as a species, or is this nonsense just a rich mother-load of material for their routines?
OK, so we all understand that burning a forest down is a rather rapid change and bad news for the animals that live there, as they don’t have time to adapt to their new environment. And we all understood that simple idea, didn’t we?
I guess the ecologists are desperately trying to dress up their science in a manner which makes it much harder for the layman to understand so they can sound as clever as electronics engineers and nuclear physicists. So they have adopted some of the language of physics and re-deployed it to make their own field seem so much more abstract. They ain’t fooling nobody.
Did they study the Polar Bear numbers?
I think we should be told.
Let me get this straight. People are starving, and others get paid to dream up this shite? We’ve lost the plot.
I nearly went for the spade when I was reading this lot. It’s my normal reaction when I see a steaming pile…
Tim
I start to worry when an alarmist peer reviewed paper contains nothing much to worry about and when at the same time they admit it. Clearly the matter has not been researched with enough thoroughness or zeal. Please tell them to go back and start allover again. The very least they could have done was sound the alarm over something completely unrelated that the science has supposedly settled.
I wonder if their model was full of simulations & representations, making it all rather sophisticated? You all know what I mean! 🙂
Anthony,
Was not Boston harbor’s waters brown after they dumped the tea?
And This is Science..
Darn it, I shoulda done an Art degree instead !!!
While the study seems to provide some good news for species facing extinction, the researchers warn that this is offset by other pressures. “This apparent good news is tempered by the fact that habitat loss, overexploitation and other factors are likely more important drivers of extinction risk than the colour of temperature fluctuations,” Dr Reuman says.
In other words, yes, we have this great study, but because it runs counter to CAGW, you can discount it. Don’t send money? 😀
Is it April 1st again?
Is this the same as reading auras?
And it induces chronic schitzophrenia in chameleons.